User submitted articles, images, and videos now have their own section under the new Game News tab. Clicking the Game News tab will immediately bring up the articles considered popular by the simExchange community. This change reflects the increasing importance of user submitted content and the growing number of features in the Community section.

As the simExchange grows, it is necessary that the rules evolve with that growth. In the early days, to encourage users to submit content, the focus of the rules were just to provide an incentive for users to submit anything. Now there is a strong flow of content and it is more important to the Community that the submitted content be helpful—with descriptive headlines and quality content. The awards for submitting content have been revised to the following:

Articles: 750 DKP
Images: 250 DKP
Videos: 1000 DKP

For each up vote, the submitter will receive 200 DKP. For each down vote, the submitter will lose 100 DKP. These changes are made to the submitter’s Vote Trust so that only the net transaction is recorded.

If an article, image, or video makes the game’s stock page and has at least 5 votes, it will be awarded “Popular” credit, which is paid immediately. The awards are the following:

Articles: 1500 DKP
Images: 1000 DKP
Videos: 3000 DKP

Players will also be awarded 100 DKP for each up vote they receive for their comments, but will also be deducted 50 DKP for each down vote they receive for comments.

These rules are effective immediately and are applied to all content and comments on record. The Rules page has been updated.

Please report any problems you encounter.

A long demanded feature has finally been introduced. You can now sort your Portfolio page by any of the fields in the table simply by clicking on the field. For example, if you want to view your positions by the largest to smallest, simply click on the Market Value label and your positions will be resorted by Market Value from largest to smallest. Clicking on the Market Value label again will resort your positions from smallest to largest market value. To access the Glossary for terms in the table, click on the [?] icon.

You can now view your Vote Trust from the Portfolio screen. The Vote Trust is the DKP credits you get from predictive voting. DKP in the Vote Trust cannot be spent until it is deposited into your Cash funds at the end of the day.

You may need to refresh the portfolio screen for it to function properly. The Glossary has also been updated.

Please note that awards for "Popular" Content, articles, images, and videos that make the front page of a stock page, have been temporarily suspended. The feature is not working as intended. Balancing changes to content rewards are coming soon.

Buying of Electronic Arts Inc's Madden NFL '07 (Xbox 360), +2.78 DKP (+1.78%), shares accelerated following the release of December sales figures that built on the strong November numbers. Shares had been rising since early November when the stock traded in the mid-60s. Since December 21, the stock has risen 55.9% from 99.99 DKP to 155.86 DKP. The stock price has appreciated significantly with higher trading volume on the simExchange and sales figures that confirmed the Xbox 360 edition’s success. The stock rose another 6.97% yesterday.

The search feature has been overhauled and now returns relevant game stocks, unlisted games, posts from the Official Blog, and user submitted articles. You can now just search a jumble of keywords and have a chance at getting some results (before if you searched "NFL Madden" you wouldn't get anything because the system would want "Madden NFL" to give you anything). The search feature now searches the title, genre, studio, publisher, and summary for the game and will return relevant listed and unlisted games. The search will also find user submitted articles with relevant headlines sorted by votes and relevant posts from the simExchange Official Blog.

Sony Corp's Rogue Galaxy for the PS2 will debut on the simExchange on Thursday, January 18, 2007. It will be categorized under the Role-playing genre. Shares will open for purchase at 100 DKP (forecasts one million copies sold worldwide over lifetime). The release for this game is scheduled for January 30, 2007. The listing was submitted by XivGNP. The game's page is found here. The summary of the game is:

Rogue Galaxy is an original IP developed by Level-5, the same studio that made Dragon Quest VIII. The player takes the role of Jaster Rogue, a young man with dreams to explore the galaxy. However, his world, Rosa, has been invaded by the Longadia Commonwealth for the planet's resources. Jaster joins a gang of space pirates and his adventures in the galaxy begin.

The game features graphics similar to Dragon Quest VIII. Like Final Fantasy XII, the game's overworld and combat are seamless. The player can see enemies and attempt to avoid them. The player controls three party members who can team up for combo abilities similar to those in Chrono Trigger. A unique feature of the game is that weapons, like characters, can improve through experience--with enough experience they will "synthesize" into improved weapons.

Rogue Galaxy was released in Japan on December 8, 2005 and has sold nearly 400,000 copies. It will be released in North America on January 30, 2007 and in Europe in June 2007.

Take Two's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (PSP), -5.76 DKP (-3.51%), continues to decline following weaker sales. The game sold only 156,600 copies in December following a weaker than expected opening month of just 125,500 copies sold in November. To compare, the previous game, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, sold 238,500 copies in November 2005 and 401,000 copies in December 2005. This is a year-over-year decline of 47.4% for November and 60.9% for December.

The stock has plummeted from 282.97 DKP (forecasts 2.83 million copies sold worldwide over lifetime) on December 24, 2006 to 164.00 DKP (forecasts 1.64 million copies sold worldwide over lifetime) as of the close yesterday, a 42% decline. Reviews have recognized Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories as a great game but criticized the fact that the game is more of the same. Gamers have even called Vice City Stories a "clone" of the previous game.

Square Enix Co’s Final Fantasy XII (PS2), +3.73 (+0.83%), climbed another 4.45% Sunday following December sales reports indicating the game has sold 3.8 – 4.0 million copies in Japan and North America. At the close of Thursday’s trading, the market had only been forecasting 3.99 million copies would be sold worldwide over lifetime; however, the game has not even been released in Europe. Since Friday, Final Fantasy XII has climbed to 453.67 DKP (forecasts 4.54 million copies sold worldwide over lifetime).

Shares of Nintendo Co Ltd's Kirby: Squeak Squad (DS), +1.65 (+1.38%), erupted 11.08% Sunday as December sales exceeded the market's expectations. The market had only forecasted 1.07 million copies for worldwide lifetime sales. Instead, December figures indicate the game has already sold nearly 1.1 million copies in North America and Japan. Shares continued higher in Monday morning trading.